Maggie and the Inconvenient Corpse

by Barbara Cool Lee

  "What kind of dog?"

  "A Rough Collie."

  She nodded. "One of Hendrix's distant cousins. They herd sheep by bumping them."

  "So he thinks my furniture is a sheep?"

  "He's probably not thinking anything. He's trying to do his job but doesn't know how."

  "I don't need any sheep herded. How do I tell him to retire?"

  "I don't think you can. Dogs like Hendrix need mental stimulation as well as physical."

  "Mental stimulation?"

  "A job. Something to do that occupies their mind."

  "Maybe he can sort beads," Abby offered helpfully. "We have an opening in that department."

  Maggie smiled wanly. She stood there, lost in thought, until the woman cleared her throat.

  "Oh, yeah," Maggie said. "Sorry."

  "I'll take these," Lauren said, handing her the big multicolor pack of Swarovski pearls.

  "Yes. Of course." Maggie rang up the sale. She put her order into a string-top bag with the Carita Beads logo on it. "Please stop by again if you're in the neighborhood," she said to the woman.

  "Oh, I will," she replied. "I work just a few blocks from here, so I'll come in for more pearls, I promise. And I'd love to take one of your classes, if I can find the time."

  "Oh," Maggie asked. "Where do you work?" She tied the string on the bag and handed it to the woman.

  "I'm a records assistant at the police department," she answered. "My boss, Lieutenant Ibarra, mentioned your shop, and I wanted to check it out." She picked up her bag and left.

  Maggie looked up, but the woman was long-gone. "Did she say she worked for the police department?"

  "Yup," Abby said. "Why do you look so shocked?"

  "Not shocked. Disappointed she got away. What a find!"

  "What do you mean?" Abby asked.

  "I mean, I might have found my very own inside source to what the police are working on, and I let her slip through my fingers. Next time she comes in, I'm waiting on her."

  Abby laughed. "Okay. But what do you think you're going to learn from her?"

  "Are you kidding?" Maggie said. "Ibarra wouldn't tell me anything about Mac's murder. I've got a real, live police department employee coming into my own shop, and I'm going to grill her until I learn everything there is to know!"

  Chapter 12

  Abby had no classes that afternoon, and she would cover the shop. So it was a little past noon when Maggie walked across the footbridge that led from Main Street toward The Row, holding her phone to her ear, and listening to a familiar, soothing voice.

  "All right," her dad was saying. "No more takeout. You're going to roast a chicken tonight. Ina Garten has a great recipe, and it's not hard at all."

  "You haven't seen my kitchen, Dad. It's tiny."

  "Yup." Her dad's gruff voice made her automatically smile. The familiar sound conveyed a world of comfort every time she heard it. "Tiny House," he said. "I got that. But it has an oven, doesn't it?"

  She sighed. "It has a convection/microwave oven. But is this really necessary? Takeout is fine. I never learned to cook, Dad. Why should I start now?"

  He laughed. "Because you're growing up. It's time."

  "What do you mean, growing up? I'm a 35-year-old divorced woman with my own business. That sounds pretty grown up."

  "Don't get all huffy with me, Mija. You can't use marrying that creep as proof of maturity."

  "Yeah. But having enough sense to divorce him means I'm not a complete idiot."

  He laughed. Then he went silent for a moment. "I know it's rude to speak ill of the dead, so I'm sorry about that. But you and that man never made any sense. Now if you marry El Dorado, I'll rethink my assessment of my daughter's intelligence."

  "That's not happening, Dad." El Dorado, her dad called him, the Golden One with the blond hair and six-pack abs. Yeah. Her dad was definitely on the wrong track. "About this whole chicken thing…."

  "You said you have a chicken. Do you have some lemon, butter, fennel?"

  "What the heck is a fennel?" she asked.

  He laughed. "Do you have celery?"

  "I spent years dieting to fit into size two designer clothes, Dad. I always have celery."

  "Well, there you go. Now, first take a quarter cup—"

  "—Hold on a second. I don't have anything to write with right now. I'm walking home."

  He jumped on that. "Why are you walking? Is that car giving you trouble? You need another car?"

  She laughed. "Settle down, Lucky Lopez. The car's fine." Lucky Lopez, the Car King of Cupertino, was famous for his slogan: We Can Get You Into a New Car Today. "I love the car you got me. It's purple."

  Her dad's exasperated sigh carried all the way from Silicon Valley to her eardrum. "It doesn't matter what color the car is. Let me get you into a nice new sedan. You want one of those hybrids? Next year's models are pretty spiffy."

  "Spiffy, Dad?" She turned onto The Row, and the path went from rough pavement to rustic aged brick, in keeping with The Row's exclusive style. "Do they come in purple?" she asked, just to hear her father's comforting laugh again.

  "All right, all right," he said. "I give up. You can keep your little purple car, and your little purple trailer. Is everything else okay?"

  "Other than somebody murdering my ex-husband and me having to take that poor dog to a rescue group next weekend, everything's great."

  "The murder of that… man… is not your problem. The cheater who slept with him killed him. Now she goes to prison. So they both get what they deserved. End of story."

  "You are so ruthless, Dad. No one deserves to be murdered. And I don't think Virginia did it."

  "Even if that's true, why do you care?" he asked.

  Maggie was walking past the house Big Mac had shared with Virginia. The crime scene tape was gone, and the modern block house looked empty and cold. She looked away.

  "I care because the man I lived with for ten years is dead. I care because murder is wrong. And I care because my gut is telling me that there's more to the case than everyone else seems to think."

  He said softly, "You know I said you hadn't proved you were intelligent, Mija?"

  "Yeah," she said, turning in to the driveway of Casablanca.

  "You're the smartest person I know. If you think there's more to the case, I believe you."

  She teared up a bit. "I know you do, Dad."

  "But if there's something else going on, you need to be careful."

  She smiled. "I'm not in any danger. I just need to look into it because I don't like that I was fooled about who he was. I don't like that there's something going on I don't understand. I just need answers. That's all."

  "Okay," he said. "But you don't go walking around any dark alleys with any murderers, okay?"

  She laughed out loud. "Don't worry, Dad. I'm just asking a few questions. Nothing's going to happen to me. Now I'm at the door of Casablanca. So I've got to go."

  "You got a date with El Dorado?" he teased.

  "No, Dad. I've got a date with a frozen chicken."

  Maggie knocked on the door and went in. The house was quiet, but she knew Reese must be here because she'd texted him and said she'd be stopping by to raid the freezer, and he'd texted back, "no prob," so she'd come over.

  It still felt weird to have to ask permission to enter her own house, but she had to get used to it.

  She called his name but he didn't answer, so she headed through the vast living room toward the kitchen in the back of the house.

  Then she saw where Reese was, and why he hadn't heard her.

  His personal trainer was there. The two men were working out on the lawn by her pool.

  She stood there in the living room and watched them through the open slider to the patio.

  Reese and the trainer were silently going through a martial arts routine. They held long bō staffs, and moved gracefully in a pattern of predetermined movements, the long sticks swishing through the air like swords.

  The sun wa
s bright. The ocean was blue in the distance, echoed by the blue of the swimming pool.

  The two men had their shirts off, and wore loose-fitting white pants that hung low on their hips.

  They moved like samurai, like knights, like gladiators, and their muscles rippled and bunched as the simple wooden sticks cut through the air, swift and deadly.

  The trainer was incredibly fit and athletic, and if he were anywhere else, he would be considered handsome.

  But he was standing next to the man who had once been named sexiest movie star in the world, and so he faded into obscurity in Reese's shadow. As everyone did.

  Every once in a while she'd catch a glimpse of him like this and it would startle her. Even after spending years in a city where residents embraced superficial attractiveness like a mantra, Reese's beauty could still shock her. With him it wasn't plastic surgery, makeup, or gym rat obsession with physical perfection.

  He was just impossibly handsome. Born with an incredible natural grace that couldn't be ignored. It was that It Factor, star quality, charisma, whatever you wanted to call it. It was what had made him a rock star, a movie star, anything but a normal person.

  But he was also a friend. A platonic friend. And she wanted to keep it that way.

  So she averted her gaze, and studiously ignored the sheen of sweat on his sun-bronzed skin, and the broad chest that required no digital enhancement to make women swoon in movie theaters all over the world.

  She left them out there and went into the kitchen to get the chicken from the freezer for her attempt at cooking.

  Reese came in while she still had her head in the freezer, searching behind his stacks of frozen pizza for her quarry.

  She straightened up, frozen bird in hand, and said hello to him.

  He had a towel around his neck, and went straight to the fridge for his orange juice.

  "Any time, Maggie," he said.

  "What?"

  His gentle smile, not quite a smirk, but just as arrogant, made clear he knew exactly what she'd been thinking.

  "Sometimes you're a real piece of work," she muttered.

  "Why?" he asked innocently. "For being brutally honest?"

  "Thinking you're irresistible is not an attractive quality."

  "I didn't say I was irresistible. You obviously resist me. Lots of women do. But lots of women don't. Do you think I should pretend women don't throw themselves at me?"

  "Not this woman," Maggie pointed out.

  "True," he said. "I'm sorry I was snarky. But you were staring."

  "Well, I'm not dead, Reese," she said sarcastically. "But it's your fault for walking around shirtless."

  "It's hot. It's my house. I'm working out."

  "So let me avert my gaze in peace and don't get flirty with me."

  "Fair enough," he said. "But I can't help being this way. This is what I am."

  He set his glass down on the kitchen island and leaned forward, hands splayed out on the granite countertop. They were gorgeous hands, with long straight fingers that she had seen create stunning music on a keyboard.

  "I can't actually help it, Magdalena," he said quietly. "What I look like, I mean."

  "You mean there's no portrait in the attic getting uglier by the day as you go on looking like that? I'm disappointed."

  He didn't even crack a smile. "Did you ever think," he said, still in that soft, introspective tone, "that I might destroy it if there were?"

  "Seriously?" she asked. "Most people would kill to look like you."

  "I know," he said. "And no, I probably wouldn't destroy the portrait. It's hard to let go of a gift once you get used to it. But as stupid as it sounds, I sometimes wish…."

  The frozen chicken was making her hands cold, so she set it on the counter. "Wish what?" she asked.

  He shrugged those magnificent shoulders. "Sometimes I think about what it would be like to chuck it all and be normal."

  "Really?" she asked. "You'd give up the fame and fortune and just be an average person?"

  "I know it's too late to be normal. I'll always be, Aren't you that guy from that car crash?"

  "I thought you were going to say, Aren't you that guy from that movie?"

  "Nope. The accident will follow me to my grave. Fame is fleeting, but infamy lasts forever."

  "I guess," she said. Then she tried to jolly him out of his funk by saying, "but you'll always have your Sexiest Man on the Planet title to fall back on."

  He sighed. "Did you ever think about the fact that I'm just me inside this body? I'm just this guy who likes to eat pizza, and hang out, and talk about stuff like a normal person. But people react to my looks like I'm an object, a thing."

  "A beautiful thing."

  "Yeah. So I've learned to live with it."

  "It has its perks," she pointed out.

  "Of course it does. It's given me a career, a life of fame and luxury. I've got First World problems. I'm so pretty people don't see me as a person. I get how stupid it is to whine about that."

  He ran a hand through his hair. That beautiful, naturally blond hair that even at almost forty years old was still thick and lush and golden like the sun. "I'm not complaining. Not really. I don't have the right to complain."

  "Sounds like you're complaining."

  "I'm not. Really. But don't get mad at me for being what I am. There really isn't any escape from it. I can't not be this."

  "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful?" she said with a laugh. "Wasn't that an old commercial?"

  "Yeah." He finally smiled. He picked up the glass and finished it. She watched his Adam's apple move as he tilted his head back and let the orange juice run down his throat. She couldn't help watching. Nobody could. And that was the problem.

  "Fine," he said when he caught her looking at him with a raised eyebrow. "I'll grow a beard and stop working out and wear rags. Would that make a difference? Would someone like you be interested in me then?"

  She shook her head. "Not me. Personally, I'm going to wait until my ex-husband is in the grave before I think about romance again. I'm really not interested in anyone right now."

  "Fair enough. But my bed's always open if you change your mind."

  "Your bed's always open," she said. "But mine's not."

  He put his juice glass in the dishwasher. "Okay. I'm heading downtown for lunch. You need anything?"

  "No thanks. Wait—yes, I do."

  "What?"

  "Park straight when you get back. Somebody reserved the parking space."

  "What time?"

  "It doesn't matter what time, Pretty Boy. Move your car."

  He was still laughing when she left.

  Chapter 13

  When Maggie got back to her house with the chicken, Jasper had knocked over her craft table and scattered the one-point-two million seed beads all over the floor.

  She put the chicken into the mini fridge, then swept up all the beads and put them into a wastebasket. It would take years to sort them out. "What am I going to do with you, Jasper?"

  He barked helpfully, and she put her hands over her ears to stop the ringing. "That's not making it better."

  She did a thorough clean up of her house to move everything out of his reach. He lay on the daybed and watched with a quizzical expression as she put away food, craft supplies, and clothes until every drawer was stuffed full and the place was, she hoped, dog-proofed.

  After that, she sat down on her stool by the craft table. The wastebasket filled with a million beads sat there on the table, reminding her of how wrong this dog was for her.

  She looked at the furry beast stretched out on the floor of the tiny house.

  When he saw her looking his way, he jumped up and came over to sit in front of her.

  She rubbed the white mane on his chest, and he smiled at her.

  "I know you're all alone now," she said to the dog. "And I feel bad about that."

  He closed his mouth, which gave him a serious expression as if he understood what she was saying.
>
  She hugged him, and he licked her arm.

  She straightened up again, and looked him in the eye. "This house is too small for you."

  He grinned at her and nodded.

  "You don't understand," she said. "You're really a lovely dog. Beautiful as can be, and just a real sweetheart."

  He kissed her nose, and she sat up straighter to put her face out of his reach.

  "But there are problems," she explained. "First, there's the fact that I've never owned a dog and don't really know how to take care of you."

  He scratched his ear and it made him look cross-eyed.

  She laughed. "Yeah. And then there's your size. You really are a great big boy. And I just don't think you can live in such a small space."

  He stood up and his hip bumped her bead loom, sending it skidding sideways across the floor again.

  She grabbed at it before it fell over. "Stop!" she shouted, and he looked crestfallen.

  "Sit down," she said.

  He just looked at her. She reached over and pushed on his rear end and he sat. "Like that," she said, and he smiled.

  "I promise I won't abandon you," she said, and he licked her hand.

  "But this is not permanent. This is a temporary thing, you being here. It's just until I can find a rescue group or some person who wants you."

  She stared at him for another minute, and he stared back, wagging his tail, seeming to take her eye contact as approval.

  He was so sweet. And so beautiful. And so incredibly big. But she was starting to feel a treacherous sense of obligation to him. It made her think about how she could possibly keep him as her own dog. But that was absolutely ridiculous.

  He gave her his most winsome look, as if he knew the internal struggle she was having and wanted to tip her decision in his favor. What was she going to do?

  "If you're going to stay for a little while, we'll have to get some ground rules straight, Jasper."

  He barked at the mention of his name.

  She frowned, and he matched his expression to hers.